woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) (08/17/89)
I really hate this situation because I have been backed into a corner. No
matter what I do I will get flamed by SOMEONE. So I'm going to try and do
the impossible and please everyone.
The original purpose of this group was to assist in the voting process for
mainstream USENET groups. That is the proposal which was voted on and passed.
This must be borne in mind when considering changes in the newsgroup charter.
However, the results of the survey I have been taking are fairly clear by now.
Since the opening gun, the responses are about 3.5 to 1 in favor of posting
alternate hierarchy announcements here. Given that, it looks like I should do
so (against my better judgment). But since it is a change in the charter, I
am going to put some reasonable limits on it. These limits are based on both
my personal feeling (I am the one doing the work, after all) and also on the
comments of people on both sides of the issue which were mailed to me.
So here is the new policy. Calls for discussion, calls for votes, and
results of votes for mainstream USENET groups should continue to be posted
here. Announcements of the creation of new groups in alternate hierarchies may
be posted here with the following provisios:
1) They must be BRIEF. No more than a screenful.
2) They must be to the point, which means they must be announcements of a new
group name and charter, nothing more. Postings which hawk the virtues of
an alternate hierarchy or a new newsgroup will NOT be accepted (which will
probably get me flamed too). Do NOT include subscription information in
the announcement. Those wanting that information can reply by mail to the
poster. That does not belong in this group. Before flaming this policy
bear in mind that some of the alternate hierarchies we are talking about
here will be subscription services, i.e. commercial networks. This policy
is intended to prevent the posting of anything that could be considered
a commercial ad in this group while still allowing the information that
people want to see to be posted here. In other words, factual information
is allowed even for commercial networks, advertising hype is not.
3) ONLY group announcements are allowed for alternate hierarchies. No calls
for votes or anything to do with group creation procedures for alternate
hierarchies will be allowed in this group.
4) Alternate hierarchies are, of course, under no obligation to announce group
creations here. Similarly I am under no obligation to post annoncements here
which appear in other places. So, only announcements explicitly posted to
this group (or mailed to the submission address) will appear here.
5) Only alternate hierarchies available on UUNET will be accepted. That is an
arbitrary restriction, but I do want to limit it to groups that are at least
using the news transport mechanism, i.e. I want to exclude CompuServe and
the like.
6) Only hierarchies theoretically available netwide will be accepted, i.e.
announcements of groups in local distributions are not allowed in this
group. Yes, I know things like "alt" groups don't go to Europe; but that is
a policy decision made by the Europeans. They COULD get them if they wanted
to. That's what I mean by "theoretically available". The intent of this
rule is just to exclude local geographical distributions.
In a futile attempt to satisfy everyone, the keyword "alternate" will
appear in all postings of alternate hierarchy group creation announcements.
Those who do not wish to see them may thus put
/alternate/h:j
into their KILL files.
This policy will remain in effect as long as the group does not become
swamped with alternate hierarchy announcements. In other words, for as long
as posting such announcements does not seriously interfere with the original
purpose of this group, which is to assist the voting process for mainstream
groups.
--Greg